One game that has thankfully garnered a cult following over the years, was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. After the breakout success of Castle Wolfenstein in 1981, Id Software got their eye on the franchise and wanted to find out how they could make Wolfenstein into a new game. Thankfully, they let the copyright for the title lapse, so they were given the opportunity to make their dream game! Wolfenstein 3D started a revolution and while we know all about Doom by now, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a bit of its own entity.
This fully rendered 3D game could have been a banger Dreamcast title. Honestly, it should have been. Released in 2001, RtCW gave us a new outlook of the castle we were escaping from and let us go off into new environments full of Nazis and very strange creatures of the occult. Gray Matter Studios did what they could to bring about an amazing feel for the World War 2 era shooter, one that would be among some of the best in the genre. It was not only accurate in some respects, but it gave us very strange elements along with it.
The weapons became far more advanced than historically accurate and that's a staple of the genre to this day. This was not only well implimented here, but also the 2009 underrated FPS classic, Wolfenstein, but that's another story for another day. This time, you've got gas masked men in armor, freaks and horrors beyond terrifyingly imaginable and Nazi guards with guns. This game has everything!
Among the weapons that we get to use far outside the normal was the flamethrower. While this is commonplace today, this was not the case for 2001 games and before. If you really wanted to see your enemies cook, this was an effective tool to do so. This weapon is very easy to screw up by making it either ineffective or way overpowered. What they did was make it very powerful, but also a necessary weapon against some of the larger enemies.
This was also the case for the Tesla Gun and the Venom Chainguns. While one is very powerful but also dangerous against yourself, the Chainguns eat ammo very, very quickly. The Lightning gun is probably the most overpowered in the game, but there are also enemies with this weapon, so there's your double edge.
The enemies were very much hyped to great levels this time around. With monsters with no legs and the undead corpses coming out, there's also mechanized soldiers with terrifyingly effective weapons. The mechanized opponents are very much an homage to Wolfenstein 3D's epic final boss fight of Mecha Hitler. Thankfully, these soldiers do not have four chainguns. Unfortunately, they are still able to kill you very quickly if you do not find cover very quickly or kill them first. Either way, they are dangerous!
If you were looking for a time capsule of 2001 gaming, this is quintessential. The backgrounds, the character models, the artillery, just about every single bit of this game is sketched to polygon perfection and the gameplay is something you could ogle for hours while you mow down castle guards with an MP40. Sadly, Tommy Gun ammo is rather rare, and you get the gun rather late in the game.
This game is not perfect by any means, as fun as it is. There are segments in this game where they take certain concepts way too far. The worst of these concepts? Stealth! The first full stealth segment of the game came with an awesome silenced steam powered submachine gun. That gun has become something of an icon of this game, but so has this level, and the latter is not in a good way. One single look from one single angle in some single way and the alarm goes off, you start over. You need to follow a certain path and shoot certain guards at certain times, or you will set off the alarm.
Then, there are the snipers. Something that a lot of games get wrong are the snipers. Sniper rifles are made entirely too powerful and getting accurately hit from a long distance can be very difficult to see coming. Can you snipe the sniper first or hide from their view? Yes, you can, but to say that this was a very delicate operation is no joke at all. One hair out of line and you are going to get your brains splattered across several screens.
No, it is not perfect, obviously, and not all of the elements aged well. Of course, we will not hold that against it. This game is nostalgia in three dimensions. If you love First Person Shooters, we got this in spades right here! You can find this game on Steam and if you can find a working copy, do not hesitate to do so! Their blood shall flow and our knife shall stab!
